


The First Monkey Out of the Barrel.  1/1

by punky_96



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13188588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punky_96/pseuds/punky_96
Summary: Re-post from LJ.From the point of view of Miranda's first assistant at Runaway when that time is well in the past.Life was so much simpler when I worked for Miranda Priestly as her assistant.





	The First Monkey Out of the Barrel.  1/1

_**The First Monkey Out of the Barrel**_  
  
A house of cards starts with just two cards, a love triangle begins with three people, a log cabin begins with four logs, and a barrel of monkeys has to start with the first monkey out of the barrel.  
  
I wonder if the first monkey knew what it was in for? Would it have chosen to be in the barrel? Would it have been so eager to be the first?  
  
It’s like looking at a doomed prisoner with a burlap sack over its head as it is pushed up the steps blindly for the executioner and the guillotine’s kiss. Does the prisoner know that their beloved is in the crowd paying last respects? Is it hot inside the sack? Does it itch? Had the prisoner known that they would get caught, or punished this severely when caught, would they have committed their crime? Was it for Queen and Country? For love? Would they do it all again damned the consequences?  
  
If you knew you would become a thing of legend would that make you think twice?  
  
Or would you pass into the next world and look back at the brouhaha in shock because while you were there and doing it—well, it was just another ordinary day.  
  
Did the first monkey out of the barrel realize what a spectacle it was creating? Was it on purpose? Did that monkey realize the pressure that its performance put on every other monkey to ever come out of a barrel for the history of all time?  
  
Getting coffee, reading minds, selecting outfits, always being early, managing the house, the car, the kids, the husband, the telephones, the schedule—and all without cell phones or lightning fast internet service.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Patently the answer is no.  
  
Would the prisoner or the monkey have done it differently depends on who you ask since they are long gone from this world.  
  
However, if you ask the first assistant to the now infamous dragonlady of  Runway, the Queen of Snow, the Perfidious Priestly… Well, the answer is YES.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
“Let them eat cake!” Perhaps that phrase was never uttered at all, let alone by Marie Antoinette. However, the symbolism is apt—the upper class has no concept of the lower class and no understanding that in order to have the ingredients for cake you would in fact have the ingredients for bread—and bread is a daily staple.  
  
Andrea Sachs, junior reporter for the  _Mirror_  will be arriving in 20 minutes and I can only surmise that she will ask me about Miranda and what it was like to be her assistant, since that is the only common ground that the girl can hope to have with me. The few that have come before her to seek me out as a thing of legend have all asked the same thing in one guise or another, “What was it like? How did you manage?” She is the only one that has come garbed in the cleverness of an actual reporter. I feel like the saying really says it all. If you can’t figure out how to be Miranda’s assistant then you shouldn’t be Miranda’s assistant. It may be horribly contrite and horribly tautological, but that is the true test isn’t it. Like when Neo went to the Oracle in the Matrix and she told him that, no he wasn’t the One because he didn’t think he was.  
  
Nigel was around back then, bless him for his longevity in Miranda’s orbit, and he simply told me, “Act as though you have the job already.” At the time that statement meant very little to me—I had no concept of what it would be like to work at a fashion magazine, let alone for the editor. I had little concept of what it was like to work everyday, all day, anyway as absorbed in school as I had been up until that moment.  
  
I came in with coffee for my interview. I was early.  The coffee was steaming hot, the way that I liked it, and I told Miranda I was her new assistant. Her blue eyes fixed on me for an instant and then her hand reached out for the coffee.  
  
She closed her eyes as her lips reached the edge of the cup.  
  
My heart sank to my toes and leapt into my throat.  
  
She let out a satisfied sigh and fixed her blue eyes on me again.  
  
“See Nigel. I want a mock run-through put together by you for the September Issue. You have an hour.”  
  
It couldn’t have been more vague really—at least to me at the time. Who was Nigel? Where I was I to go? What was a run-through? September Issue? It was April for crying out loud.  
  
Her blue eyes sparkled with pleasure and my spine tingled with the challenge. I turned on my mary-janes and left her office with a purpose to my step. Finding Nigel was the easiest part—his name was on the wall outside his office, which was on the way to the elevator—in case I decided to just leave in a blind panic never to return. I know that was the plan—her gleaming eyes and second sip in front of my face told me so. Make a bee line out of here on the nearest elevator or find Nigel’s office and make the unknown into something miraculous in under an hour.  
  
I did it. I met her challenge with thirty seconds to spare. I got the job.  
  
And by doing so, with pleasure, I sealed the fate of every assistant to ever come after me.  
  
And I don’t give a shit.  
  
If they don’t have what it takes, then they don’t. That’s all.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Andrea Sachs, Northwestern, articles for the  _Daily Northwestern_ , 8 months at Runway, cub reporter for the  _Mirror_.  
  
Residence: ### E. 72nd Street, New York, New York, 10021  
  
My mind stopped on that piece of information. As much as I wanted to dismiss this cub reporter as simply doing a puff piece and wanting to compare notes about Miranda, I had to look into her past and then I had more questions than she likely had for me. Well, wasn’t that something.  
  
Miranda was always very careful about people, not just associating with the right ones and all of that hi-society kind of thing, but also knowing who you shared information with, who worked for you, who worked with your children and who might talk to the press and in what way. I did not bust my ass working for the new editor and then on my own to the top of the New Yorker without learning from her. I was just as nosy and just as cautious.  
  
With only a few more minutes to spare before she arrived I had no way to investigate further. I would just have to play my cards close to my chest and see what the girl had to offer on her own.  
  
Still, a cub reporter not even finishing her time at  Runway, that was able to go on in publishing immediately and could afford to live on the upper east side… Not only the upper east side but an address that nagged in my brain as frightfully familiar.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
“Ms. Greenway. Andrea Sachs to see you.”  
  
I nodded and stood at my desk. She showed the girl in. “Thank you, Michelle.” I dismissed her.  
  
Andrea Sachs, tall, slim, confident, Manolos, Calvin Klein and a perky down home Ohio smile.  
  
Well, I’ll be damned. She didn’t look scared or new or scrappy at all. ‘Act as though you have the job already.’ Nigel’s voice echoed in my head once again. This girl, no, this woman already had a Pulitzer prize and my office by the looks of it.  
  
Her hand came up, a cup of coffee in it. Her brown eyes shone as they met mine. She smiled as if to say, 'Take it. Come on, you know you want to.'  
  
As if on reflex I reached for the cup. I did want to, I wanted to know more about this woman.  
  
“Miranda sends her greetings.” Her eyes closed as her lips reached the edge of her own cup and I was suddenly uncertain of who was interviewing whom. “Shall we?” She motioned to the chair opposite my desk and sat down. I followed mesmerized. There must have been an imaginary tool box behind her, because she then pulled out a small recorder, placed it on my desk and returned to her coffee as if she had eight hands and thought nothing of the possible unusualness this sight would be to others and the gobsmackedness it would cause in them. I supposed working for Miranda did that to you. You accomplished Herculean feats without even thinking about it after a while and you wondered what other people thought was so miraculous later when you finally stopped long enough to notice other people again. “Why the New Yorker and not a fashion magazine?” She pushed record, took a sip, and sat back looking at me with sparkling brown eyes.  
  
“How refreshing.” I said as I took a second sip of the scalding hot coffee as well. “It had always been my dream…”  
  
*** *** ***  
  
The interview never dipped into the personal and so my questions were left unanswered. The interview also, surprisingly enough, never touched upon my time at Runway with Miranda. Oddly enough right from the first I would have been glad to talk to her about Miranda and Runway.  
  
What a day of surprises, indeed.  
  
My assistant didn’t have any difficulty in finding Miranda’s number although she did have to brow beat the newer assistant into giving it to her. Of course the editor of the New Yorker could contact the editor of Runway through professional channels, but I wanted to renew the personal part of my relationship with Miranda. Most of our interaction was about work, to be sure, but towards the end a kind of friendship developed. Her first husband was leaving her as was mine and the barest of bonds had been formed—just enough friendship to know that we were not alone. Not enough friendship to have tea parties and theater dates though.  
  
“Yes.” She answered the phone just as she used to and I smiled. I missed jumping through someone else’s hoops at the end of an atrocious day. Life was so much simpler when I worked for Miranda Priestly as her assistant.  
  
“Miranda.” I hesitated letting her place my voice and choosing at the last what my question would be. “Why didn’t you send her over to me instead of the  _Mirror?”_  
  
The laughter was just as I remembered it—like crystal hitting harmonious notes. I could see her blue eyes sparkling as clear and full of malicious mirth as on that first day. “She’s too stubborn for that.”  
  
I laughed with her as all of my questions were swept up and answered.  
  
“Amazing though?”  
  
I sighed in agreement. “Indeed. Fine choice. Let me know when she’s ready.”  
  
I heard the twins come into the room in the background and she muffled the earpiece a moment to talk to them. “She speaks for herself, surely you could see that.” The footsteps of the twins made me smile. I wondered how old they were now.  
  
“She brought coffee.”  
  
Another peal of laughter warmed my heart. “Of course she did.”  
  
“Did you tell her to do that?”  
  
“Of course not.” I heard the twins scolding Patricia now. “Hmmm.” Miranda thought through her distractions. “Come around for dinner next week. Wednesday. 7pm?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“You have the address.”  
  
*** *** ***  
  
“Andrea, this is Lauren, my first assistant at  Runway.”  
  
The brunette was surprised. She knew I was an assistant at Runway, she had to, but she had not realized that I was the first one. An army of questions lined up behind her eyes and this time there was no recorder for the newspaper. I smiled and took her outstretched hand.  
  
“Lauren, this is Andrea, my first lover.”  
  
Andrea gasped and looked at Miranda. I simply took a firm grip on her hand and shook it as I met sparkling mischievous blue eyes.  
  
Those other assistants that came to ask me questions always asked what it was like to work for Miranda Priestly. They wanted to know how to please her. They wanted some secret or insight that would help them pole volt over the learning process that had to occur in order to evolve into the best and become worthy of the next step.  
  
For the first time I found myself wondering of this woman many similar questions. What was it like to love Miranda Priestly? How did you please her? *Cough* Not like that! Surely her husbands didn’t love her or at the very least didn’t know the answers to these questions.   
  
Perhaps, indeed, being the assistant made for a better companion to Miranda. Perhaps the husbands should have asked the assistants for some advice all along. In my experience as sure as it had become Andrea’s, the dragonlady was more bark than bite as long as you didn’t get bitten too hard in trying to get close to success.  
  
“There are so many things…” We trailed off talking at the same time, asking the same question.  
  
Laughter was shared among us like a delicious secret. I felt for the first time that I was in the barrel with other monkeys instead of the first monkey out of the barrel—a curiosity to outsiders. Instead I felt like I was in the warm home of the chief monkey and in good company with another monkey that others might wonder about, but never have any concept of.   
  
To those pestering questioners on the outside looking in, I would say one thing only, “Let them eat cake.”

 

  
  
FIN.


End file.
